Abortion clinics regroup, rebuild after violent attacks: ‘There’s more work to be done’

Christine Fernando, USA TODAY
March 25, 2023

As a detective led her through the charred remains of the clinic, Julie Burkhart was heartbroken. Everything was black and melted. The smell was overwhelming. Fire and smoke damage had engulfed the building from the basement to the attic.

“I knew then that we were going to have a long road ahead,” said Burkhart, president of Wellspring Health Access in Casper, Wyoming.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/25/abortion-clinics-violence-attacks-rebound-rebuilding/11484439002/


Anti-Abortion Movement Is Capitalizing On Coronavirus

Anti-Abortion Movement Is Capitalizing On Coronavirus
In defiance of stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines, protesters continue to harass patients at abortion clinics.

By Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPost US
05/21/20

On an average day, even during the pandemic, a handful of anti-abortion protesters line up on the sidewalk outside the Heritage Clinic for Women in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and preach at the women who enter. Their faces are familiar to clinic staff, as are their regular schedules.

But last Wednesday, when the clinic opened in the morning, the staff were startled to find 25 to 30 protesters assembling, many of them holding single red roses. Ignoring the no-trespassing signs, they began swarming the clinic’s parking lot, rushing patients as they got out of their cars.

Continued: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/the-anti-abortion-movement-is-capitalizing-on-the-coronavirus_n_5ec57470c5b6ceaf1631b29c?ri18n=true


USA – She Wanted An Abortion. Feds Say Her Ex Threatened to Bomb the Clinic.

She Wanted An Abortion. Feds Say Her Ex Threatened to Bomb the Clinic.
Court documents show a South Carolina man has been hit with federal charges for interfering with reproductive health care.

by Marie Solis
Oct 7 2019

A South Carolina man named Rodney Allen has been arrested and charged with calling in a fake bomb threat to a Jacksonville, Florida, health clinic in order to prevent a woman he was formerly in a relationship with from obtaining an abortion.

According to a sworn affidavit submitted in federal court last month by FBI Special Agent Robert W. Blythe, these events took place after Allen allegedly sexually assaulted the woman—identified in the affidavit only as A.S.—which resulted in her becoming pregnant. A.S. also alleged that Allen was physically abusive, and had threatened to kill multiple members of her family. The case, USA v Allen, is still in process in a Florida district court. (Blythe did not respond to VICE’s request for comment.)

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kenp7/south-carolina-man-threatened-to-bomb-abortion-clinic-because-ex-girlfriend-was-there-usa-v-rodney-allen


As Trump Fans the Flames of Anti-Abortion Rhetoric, Kansas Offers a Cautionary Tale

As Trump Fans the Flames of Anti-Abortion Rhetoric, Kansas Offers a Cautionary Tale

Jordan Smith
August 2 2019

A sheriff’s deputy was waiting in his car along Interstate 35 just outside Kansas City, Kansas, on the afternoon of May 31, 2009, when the powder-blue Ford Taurus rolled by.

The deputy pulled out behind the car and followed it. He took up two lanes and put on his hazards so no one would try to pass as he called for backup. Minutes later, a four-car posse pulled the Taurus over. Inside was 51-year-old Scott Roeder. He got out of the car with his hands raised. There was blood on his pants and one of his shoes.

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2019/08/02/anti-abortion-violence-kansas/


USA – Ten years after abortion doctor’s murder, one woman carries the fight for reproductive rights

Ten years after abortion doctor's murder, one woman carries the fight for reproductive rights
In 2009, George Tiller was shot dead in Kansas. Today, as America’s discord over abortion reaches fever pitch, Julie Burkhart is keeping the flame alive

Ed Pilkington
Fri 31 May 2019

Julie Burkhart remembers all too vividly the morning of 31 May 2009. It was a Sunday and she was in a meeting in Washington DC when, shortly after 10am, her phone started buzzing incessantly with calls from her home town of Wichita, Kansas.

When she got through to one of her co-workers she thought at first he was making a surreal joke. George Tiller, her mentor with whom she had worked side-by-side for the past eight years at the frontlines of America’s abortion wars, had been accosted at Sunday service in his Wichita church and shot dead.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/he-gave-so-much-the-woman-fighting-the-abortion-wars-begun-by-george-tiller


Unplanned Is a Movie That Could Get Someone Killed

Unplanned Is a Movie That Could Get Someone Killed

Apr. 12, 2019
By Caitlin Moscatello

The makers of Unplanned, the anti-abortion propaganda film that’s earned more than $6 million since its debut in late March, waste no time getting to their point. Just minutes after the lights in the theater go dark, viewers are transported to what’s supposed to be a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, where an aspiration abortion (when a suction device is used) is taking place.

The dramatized scene includes a patient like almost every other patient in the film — young, white, pretty — with her feet in stirrups, the sound of a fetal heartbeat pulsing in the background. “Beam me up, Scotty!” says the doctor, and the young woman cries out as a nurse holds her down. “It hurts! It hurts!” she wails, to which the nurse barks, “You want it done, don’t you?” Moments later, the screen fills with an ultrasound image of a fetus wiggling away from the device.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2019/04/unplanned-is-a-movie-that-could-get-someone-killed.html


Three women stabbed in Chile pro-abortion march

Three women stabbed in Chile pro-abortion march

28/07/2018
Bridie Chetwin-Kelly

Three women have been stabbed in Santiago, Chile during a march for free and safe abortions.

The women and a police officer were attacked by a group of people wearing hoods, leaving them with non-life threatening injuries.

Santiago resident and pro-abortionist, Ale Silva, told Newshub the group were men from a far-right group, and the Chile media ignored the attack.

Continued: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2018/07/three-women-stabbed-in-chile-pro-abortion-march.html


Paraguay – Pro-abortion Activists Victims of Hit and Run in Ascuncion

Pro-abortion Activists Victims of Hit and Run in Ascuncion
Two pro-abortion advocates were hit and run as demonstrators gathered in front of the Argentine embassy in Ascuncion, Paraguay to support their neighbor's law

Published 13 June 2018

Two Paraguayan women were run over as they and 60 others demonstrated in favor of legalized abortion.

About 60 pro-abortion advocates had gathered on Tuesday night in front of the Argentine Embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay to support their Argentine neighbors as they vote on Wednesday whether or not to legalize a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Pro-abortion-Activists-Victims-of-Hit-and-Run-in-Ascuncion--20180613-0018.html


USA – Woman who shot Wichita abortion doctor, bombed clinics in 1990s released from prison

Woman who shot Wichita abortion doctor, bombed clinics in 1990s released from prison

By Judy L. Thomas
May 22, 2018

The Oregon woman who shot and wounded a Wichita abortion doctor 25 years ago and firebombed several clinics in three states has been released from federal prison, causing concern among clinic operators who worry her release could spark a new wave of attacks.

Rachelle "Shelley" Shannon, whose actions triggered a federal investigation into the possible existence of a nationwide conspiracy of anti-abortion terrorists intent on shutting down abortion clinics, left the Waseca Federal Correctional Facility in Minnesota on Monday and was being transported by bus to Portland, where she will be staying in a halfway house, according to her friends.

Continued: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article211653329.html


Inside a US abortion clinic

Inside a US abortion clinic

Valeria Perasso, Social Affairs correspondent, WS Languages
14 May 2018

Ten women walk along a busy, fluorescent-lit corridor. Undressed from the waist down, they wear big white sheets, knotted over their hips, as they make their way to the "relaxation room", a windowless space, equipped with large sofas and a TV. There they wait, mostly in silence, for their turn to have an abortion.

This is Hope Medical Group for Women, a small abortion clinic in the US city of Shreveport serving an ever-expanding 200-mile radius through rural Louisiana and all the way to Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Continued: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43966855